


Quarters for the Criminally Insane

by walkwithursus



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Adrenaline, Arguing, Borderline Personality Disorder, Concussions, Face Fisted, Face Punching, Fainting, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Pre-Klok, Punching, Serious Injuries, Shock, Stabbing, Swearing, knife
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 13:26:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13741872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkwithursus/pseuds/walkwithursus
Summary: For the past few months Nathan had been dreaming off and on about Magnus assaulting him, and of all the possibilities Nathan’s sleeping brain had come up with, a stab wasn’t that bad. It was kind of poetic, too. Getting stabbed in the back by the guy, the fucking antithesis of all that was right with the band, with Dethklok.God damn it if this wasn’t the fucking wake up call he’d needed -- that they’dallneeded -- regarding their manic depressive fucked up rhythm guitarist.





	Quarters for the Criminally Insane

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Pax Vobis for the [inspiration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7668769/chapters/17464219) behind this fic.

It had been a long time coming, the stabbing. 

In some ways it was almost a relief that it had finally happened -- that it was done, over with, finished. Amidst the shock and the confusion and the horror of it all, Nathan almost felt like he could breathe again, like he’d been holding his breath a long, long time and had finally let it out. 

Since January of that year he’d been having dreams about Magnus. Not in a gay way -- nothing gooey or sappy or sentimental or whatever, though truth be told that might have been better. Well, not _better_ , exactly, that was pushing it a little too far, but still, to even suggest that an erotic dream involving Magnus could be better than the alternative was a testament to just how fucking bad the dreams actually were. 

For the past few months Nathan had been dreaming off and on about Magnus assaulting him, and of all the possibilities Nathan’s sleeping brain had come up with, a stab wasn’t that bad. At least he hadn’t been shot by one of the guy’s stupid collectible guns, or had his throat cut by one of his stupid collectible knives, or been curb stomped, or run over, or strangled to death. Not that Magnus could have ever hoped to strangle him in real life, but these things happened in dream world, where it was perfectly reasonable for the guy to wrap a cord around his throat from the backseat of a car while Nathan drove, or walk in on him in the bathtub and plunge a live toaster into the water. So this, the real life culmination of all their disagreements and arguments and almost-fights, this was fine. A stab was brutal, but survivable, and not nearly as embarrassing as floating naked in a bathtub with your dick out for the paramedics. 

It was kind of poetic, too. Getting stabbed in the back by the guy, the fucking antithesis of all that was right with the band, with Dethklok. Figuratively, Magnus had been doing it for months; talking shit whenever Nathan’s head was turned, hassling the other guys to his side during arguments, staging a mutiny every other practice session like he was some kind of musical martyr. Lately it had seemed as though every time Nathan glanced out of the corner of his eye there he was, whispering something in Murderface’s ear or slinging an arm around Pickles’ shoulder as though to say _“Mine. My drummer, my bassist, my band.”_

Nathan couldn’t give less of a shit if he tried. Sure, Dethklok was in many ways Magnus’ baby, and he often took credit for their formation, but at the end of the day it was Nathan who had extended the band invite to Magnus, and not the other way around. And so no, Nathan didn’t give a shit about his pissing contests and his side long looks. How could he, when Skwisgaar had proved to Nathan months ago that he could play Magnus’ so-called ‘hardest lick’ double-time, and Pickles could hexi-kick his rhythms into a flatline? When Magnus blamed his shit sound on his guitar or his strings, but the one time Skwisgaar had challenged him to play on his Excalibur Magnus had ducked his head and spouted off some bullshit about never touching another man’s instrument? Even Murderface, who fucking _idolized_ the guy, had gotten sick of his bullshit a time or two and complained that he was too wild on stage, that he focused less on playing guitar and more on fucking around with the audience. 

Nathan wasn’t all that thrilled about getting stabbed, but god damn it if this wasn’t the fucking wake up call he’d needed -- that they’d _all_ needed -- regarding their manic depressive fucked up rhythm guitarist. 

It hadn’t taken long to get Magnus out of the apartment. After Pickles had pulled Nathan off the guy they’d dragged him to his feet and thrown him out onto the concrete porch, toward the second-hand lawn chair with the white plastic slats. Overhead, the red light bulb had thrown his gaunt features into sharp relief, and Nathan saw in Magnus’ wicked scowl a black hole where a tooth was supposed to be, and felt a surge of satisfaction. The fucker would be permanently disfigured by the absence of his front tooth, and at least temporarily disfigured by the black eye that was starting to develop, his right eyelid swelling shut, oozing blood and clear fluid down his scraggly cheek. 

Magnus didn’t attempt to force his way back in. Nathan knew he wouldn’t try, couldn’t now that he’d lost his only weapon, the knife sticking out between his shoulder blades. There was a limit to his stupidity, and if there was anything in the world that Magnus was good at, that he even remotely cared about, it was self-preservation. One quick look at Nathan’s curled fists seemed enough to deter him from a final stampede into the apartment. Instead he coughed, hard, and blood spurted from his nose to dribble down over his lips and chin. 

“My guitar,” he rasped. 

Nathan had punched his throat at one point. He remembered the way it had felt under his knuckles, hard, as though there were bones rippling underneath his skin. If he’d fucked up his windpipe, Nathan couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry.

“Fuck you!” Pickles shrieked at Nathan’s side, and he spit on the concrete. Magnus moved his boot to avoid the glob and didn’t reply. When he didn’t make a move to get up Pickles added, “Get the fuck outta here,” and after a beat Nathan slammed the door and slid the deadbolt into place. 

The thin hallway of their shared apartment was dark, and they stood there for a moment, breath coming fast and shallow. On tiptoe, Pickles pressed his eye against the peephole and watched as Magnus presumably walked down the steel stairs in the direction of his car. Nathan half expected to hear the sound of something breaking -- the porch light, the lawn chair, a window. But he caught nothing, until the familiar yowl of Magnus’ car engine lit up the night, and the peel of his tires squealed on the asphalt as he sped off down the street. And then nothing. Just the grasshoppers, and the sound of Pickles’ breath whistling in and out of his nose. A few seconds later and the drummer had pulled his face away from the peephole and backed up a step. 

“Shit,” Pickles whispered. “Shit shit shit shit _shit.”_

Nathan jerked his chin in mute agreement, and together they made their way back toward the practice space, the cramped living room where Murderface and Skwisgaar stood exactly as they’d left them, guitars strapped across their bodies and mouths open. Hardly any time seemed to have passed at all -- and probably it hadn’t. The entire ordeal couldn’t have taken more than sixty seconds, and yet it felt impossible that so much had happened in what amounted to less than a minute. 

“Ams he gone?” Skwisgaar asked at last, and Pickles nodded, wiping a hand over his eyes and face. Nathan noticed he was covered in sweat from his effort on the drums only minutes before, or from the strain of hauling out bird-boned Magnus, who weighed a lot more than he looked.

“Yeah. He’s gone.” Pickles said, and he turned to look at Nathan, who looked back mutely. “Shit, Nate. Shit. How are you still fuckin’ standing?”

Nathan shrugged, and that felt weird, not painful, but as though his range of motion was somehow limited, and for the first time he tried to glance over his shoulder to see the wound. Out of the corner of his eye he could just make out the handle of the knife protruding from the torn fabric of his tank top, brown leather inlaid with little turquoise stones. Kind of gay looking, if he were being honest. Of all the knives to get stabbed with, it had to be this cowboy looking piece of shit. Whatever, no one had ever said that Magnus had good taste. 

But a knife was a knife, so that did beg the question, how _was_ he still standing? It wasn’t as though it were a conscious effort. He just sort of continued to stay upright because that felt normal, felt fine. His legs weren’t wobbling, and his vision wasn’t blurring, so that was probably a good sign. 

And if he was going to die he would have collapsed by now, right? From what Nathan knew about getting stabbed, which wasn’t a whole lot, if a person was going to die from it they died pretty quick. If they were going to survive, they didn’t die quick. At least, that’s how it was in the movies, the slasher flicks and the horror films and his mother’s cop dramas. The person either bled out in seconds or writhed around for awhile, stayed conscious, continued talking and breathing. And so far Nathan felt more like the latter individual, minus the writhing part, though the night was still young so who could say if he wouldn’t end it seizing on the floor? Either way, the fact that he was still alive sixty seconds after the fact meant he had to have a pretty decent chance at survival. If he were in a TV show, anyway. 

“Sit the fuck down,” Pickles commanded, and so Nathan plunked back down in the armchair under the air conditioner, where only minutes ago he’d been watching the band practice. He hunched forward to keep the handle from touching the back of the chair, to keep it from shoving deeper in, and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. 

Murderface took a tentative step forward. “What do we do now?” He asked shrilly as he slowly removed his bass and set it in its stand. After a moment of hesitation Skwisgaar reluctantly did the same. “I mean, he’s okay, right? Look at him. He’s not even bleeding.”

“That’s cause the knife’s still in, idiot,” Pickles retorted as he peeked around Nathan’s shoulder to get a look at his back. “I’m gonna look at it, okay?” Nathan didn’t answer, and so Pickles wiped a hand on the seat of his jeans and started picking at his tank top. He couldn’t see what Pickles was doing, but he felt the fabric lift gently from the skin at the back of his neck, clinging and wet with cold sweat. After a second Pickles whistled low, and said, “It’s pretty deep. Can’t even see the top of it.” 

Nathan’s stomach twisted. “Where is it?” He asked, craning his neck to catch a glimpse down the back of his tank top.

“Shoulder. Kind of toward the middle. Not right on your spine but like a few inches away,” Pickles described, and Nathan nodded. Not on the spine. Not _on_ the spine. Not _right on_ the spine. That was good. That was important. As long as the knife hadn’t severed his spine he’d be fine. And if it had, at least everything in Florida was wheelchair accessible.

Pickles let the shirt fall from his fingers and wiped his hands on his jeans again. “But it’s fine,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine. It obviously didn’t hit anything important otherwise you’d have died by now. Totally fine.” Nathan couldn’t decide who Pickles was trying to reassure, but nodded along in case it was him. 

“So, should we just take it out, then?” Murderface asked. “I mean, he seems fine to me. It’s not like it went in his stomach or anything. It’s just in his back, there’s nothing there that matters.” 

Pickles made a _snick!_ noise with his tongue. “Take it out? Are you shitting me right now? No, we can’t just fucking take it out. He’ll bleed out. He’ll -- he’ll fuckin’ _bleed the fuck out.”_ Pickles said, and for a split second it sounded like he might lose it, and Nathan felt a chill of fear run through him. The last thing he needed right now was for Pickles to freak out, leaving Murderface or Skwisgaar in charge. 

“What the fuck do you know, you’re not a doctor!” Murderface spat back, and Nathan winced at the level of his volume. “What do you think people did back in the day before hospitals? They took care of this shit themselves.”

“Well then it’s a good thing this isn’t _back in the day!”_ Pickles shot back. 

Murderface glowered at him. “Fuck you! At least I’m trying to help the guy. You’re just fucking standing around wasting time.” 

“Will you just shut up so I can think?” Pickles said, and Murderface uncharacteristically obeyed, turning sharply to climb over the kick drum and sit on Pickles’ stool with his arms crossed. Nathan watched as Pickles’ fingers massaged the bridge of his nose, eyes screwed shut and mouth turned down. 

From somewhere else in the house came the sound of a telephone dialing and the shrill ascending notes of a failed call. The next second Pickles had sprinted from the room and the sound of squealing sneakers and crashing plastic echoed from the kitchen. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Pickles shouted, and Skwisgaar’s answering tone was indignant. Nathan hadn’t even noticed he’d left the living room.

“Callings da fuckin’ ams-bulance, what’s do you tinks? But I can’ts remembers da fuckin’ numbers! Nine-nine-one? Nine-one-one?”

“Stop, just stop,” Pickles ordered. More grinding plastic. “You can’t call 911 _here.”_

“Why da fucks not?” 

“This isn’t fucking Switzerland --”

“Swe --”

“ _Sweden,_ fuck, whatever! You just can’t. It opens up a whole fucking can of worms, alright? And we don’t need that shit right now. We don’t need fucking cops swarming the place, we don’t need an ambulance, we can handle this. Okay? Jesus.” 

Pickles reappeared seconds later in the living room towing the guitarist by the front of his shirt. Skwisgaar held the beige plastic receiver of the telephone in one hand, its curly cord dangling and disconnected from its cradle in the kitchen wall. Once he’d dragged him a sufficient distance from the doorway Pickles released him and marched back to stand beside the chair Nathan was sitting in. 

“Okay. It’s like this,” Pickles said after a moment, a sort of forced calm to his tone. “We can’t take out the knife ourselves. Believe me, it doesn’t work, I’ve seen it. He’s gotta go to the hospital. But we can’t call a fucking ambulance, alright? That’s out of the question.” He shot a look at Skwisgaar, who squinted back and turned his cheek. 

Nathan noticed that he was mostly forgotten. Pickles focused his address toward Skwisgaar and Murderface, as though he weren’t actually present right beside the drummer’s elbow. Which he might as well have not been. The previously sharpened features of the living room were becoming slowly muddled around the edges, grainy like the picture on an old TV set. He blinked hard, really hard, as though the pressure would somehow clear the sludge away from his vision, but when he looked again the view was just as fuzzy, and so he put his head between his knees and concentrated on listening to his band mates instead. 

“So then what do we do?” asked Murderface from across the room. “We can’t drive him there ourselves.”

It was true. Right now, Magnus was the only one in Dethklok with a running car. Pickles and Nathan had shit all -- after rent every month they barely had ten bucks between them for a case of beer, and Skwisgaar had never even gotten a license in Sweden, let alone in the United States. Murderface had cars, but they were all junkers and fixer-uppers propped up on cinder blocks in his grandmother’s front yard, missing some integral piece to function. Tires, transmission, clutch, it was all rust and scrap metal to Nathan, and to the best of his knowledge nothing drove without someone behind to push it. So that left Magnus and his pickup with the taped up passenger window and the crooked fender. Nathan would rather bleed out here on the carpet than climb into the cab with him after what had happened. Not that they’d be able to persuade him to come back if they wanted to, if they could even track him down in the first place. 

“I can take myself,” Nathan said, or at least he thought he said it, felt his lips brush together and his tongue move, swollen and fat in his mouth. He couldn’t really hear his own voice, but the others turned their attention toward him as though they’d heard.

“What do you mean ‘take yourself?’” Pickles asked.

“Take… the bike.” His motorcycle. Well, their motorcycle, his and Pickles. They’d split the price, three hundred bucks apiece, so it technically belonged to both of them. A summer full of odd jobs and pawning off belongings and they hadn’t had the foresight to get a car. Not that anyone could have predicted this sort of thing would happen, but still. Someone really should have. 

Pickles snapped his head quickly from side to side. “Uh uh. No way. You’re not taking the fuckin’ bike, Nate.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? What do you mean _‘why not?’_ You’re fucking _bleeding,_ that’s why not. You have a fucking knife sticking out of your back, that’s _why not.”_

Nathan frowned and pushed himself to the edge of his seat, preparing to stand with a hand on either arm of the chair. “I’m good. Seriously, Pickles, look at me. I’m good to drive.” And he stood, despite that weird pulling feeling again, like his muscles were trying to move in their normal pattern but couldn’t figure out where the interruption was. There was no pain, not much sensation at all really around the shoulder blades, but near the small of his back there was a wetness, a ticklishness that raised the hairs on the backs of his arms. 

Pickles looked from his face to the armchair, and jabbed his finger toward the cushion. “You’re fucking bleeding, Nathan! There’s fucking blood everywhere. God, this is not fucking happening.” Nathan looked in the direction Pickles pointed and saw a small, fresh stain on the fabric of the armchair, about the size and shape of a Florida orange. Not even the largest stain by a long shot, but it was there, shining wetly in the light, oozing into the fibers of the cloth. 

“S’fine,” Nathan said, swaying in place. 

Pickles grabbed a fistful of dreads in either hand and tugged theatrically. “It’s not fuckin’ fine! You’re literally slurring your words right now, Nate! What if you passed out on the bike? Jesus, sit the fuck back down.” 

Nathan did as he was told, and just in time, too. As he collapsed back onto the chair he felt his legs and arms give out, and the entirety of his field of vision swam with that same grainy picture as before, grey and black and white. On some level he realized he was passing out, which apart from being the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him didn’t feel too good. In fact, it felt pretty _not_ good, pretty fucked up and bad. Nathan couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open, because he couldn’t even feel his eyes, or feel his fingers as they searched for the arms of the chair he hoped he’d landed on. _God_ he hoped he’d landed on the chair, and in a way that hadn’t shoved the knife further into his back. 

Not that there was anything he could do about it. Nathan knew from experience that there wasn’t much to be done but ride the wave, wait it out until he resurfaced. At least, he thought he knew. This feeling wasn’t all that unlike the concussion he’d experienced back in high school, the second one, the one that had knocked his head so hard he’d limped off the football field half-blind, banking on the arm around his back to guide him toward the lockers. Everything had been grainy then, too, and it was the same sound as well, a roaring, crashing wave, like listening to the ocean through the open mouth of a seashell, loud and static and inescapable. Recognizing the feeling didn’t help the dormant panic, though. If anything it was amplified, and Nathan could hear his mom’s voice proclaim _“If it weren’t for that damned concussion he would have graduated high school,”_ and his father’s murmurs of agreement. 

But passing out wouldn’t fuck up his brain anymore, right? He was pretty sure losing consciousness didn’t do that to a person. Then again, he only _thought_ he was passing out, when for all he knew this could be the beginning of his writhing on the floor episode, the beginning of a fit or a seizure. Or maybe this was what dying felt like, a slow loss of sensation and awareness, of self-command, and Nathan wondered in the abstract if it was true that the body shit itself at the moment of death, and hoped vainly that it was not. Unfortunately, given the smell of the venues after a Dethklok show, he had a niggling suspicion it probably was. 

Lucky for him, Nathan soon couldn’t worry about any of that, as a great encompassing blackness swallowed up the rest of his conscious thoughts. And he stayed down for awhile, so deep that even the hand that slapped him over and over across the cheek couldn’t quite touch him. 

The next thing he was aware of was the sound of the TV. Someone had turned it on to a low volume, a muttering background noise, not quite distinct enough to pick out anything specific, but Nathan listened to it regardless and thought maybe it was a _Charlie Brown_ cartoon. The _wub-wah-wub-wah-wah_ voices of the adults were nearly unmistakable, and so he listened to them comfortably for awhile, until it occurred to him that he could understand what they were saying. Which either meant he had stumbled upon some higher plane of linguistic intelligence, or that the voices weren’t coming from a cartoon at all. 

Nathan decided the latter was probably more likely, and tried to focus in on the meaning behind the words. The voices were reaching him as though they were shouting at him from the opposite end of a football field, and only including him on part of the conversation. Talking about different modes of transportation, weighing their pros and cons. Someone liked the city bus, and Nathan wanted to argue that the buses in Tampa were shit, unreliable at best and dangerous at worst, but by the time his tongue had located his teeth and started to form the words the conversation and progressed to motorcycles. _Back_ to motorcycles. They’d been talking about motorcycles before. 

Nathan opened his eyes. The practice room came slowly, blearily into focus, the drum kit and the vague outlines of his guitarists and their instruments. All the color seemed to have washed out of the place but otherwise it looked normal, tangible, and he felt his pulse quiet in relief. 

“The bike’s too small to fit both of us. We tried it once and it didn’t work,” Pickles was saying, and Nathan rolled his head to look up at him, blinking one eye and then the other. Pickles was red and sweaty, and there was a vein popping in the side of his temple that Nathan had only seen before during Dethklok shows, when he threw himself into the drums full-force. 

From across the room Skwisgaar yelped, “Look, he wakes up!” and Pickles glanced down and nearly jumped out of his skin to find Nathan staring at him.

“Oh, thank fuck. Thank fuck. God dammit, thank fuck.”

“See, I told you he’d just passed out,” Murderface said, knocking the stool over in his haste to stand up and climb around the drum kit. Pickles waved him back and knelt down next to the armchair to get at Nathan’s eye level.

“You good man? You had us freakin’ out for a second there. Thought we were gonna have to carry your ass outta here.” 

Nathan nodded and raised a hand to paw at his eyes with numb fingers. He gouged one, but it didn’t hurt. “Yeah... Good. M’good. What uh. What’s the plan?” 

Pickles whipped his head around and barked out, “Skwisgaar, get him a glass of water, will ya?” 

“On it,” Skwisgaar said, and he sprung toward the kitchen, trailing the cord of the plastic phone behind him. Nathan watched him leave before turning his attention back to Pickles, who was wiping his forehead with the back of his wristband.

“We thought about taking the bus, but there’s really no way they’d let you on like this,” he explained in a rush. “And it’s almost midnight, so most of the buses aren’t running anyway. We’d have to walk downtown just to catch the 45, but the closest stop is basically within walking distance of the hospital anyway so it doesn’t even matter.”

Nathan nodded slowly. Even at full capacity, he wasn’t all that spatially aware, and try as he might he couldn’t quite trace the bus route from their apartment to the hospital in downtown Tampa. Bits and pieces, sure, but the pictures in his brain left several blocks unaccounted for. Yet even missing half the map in his mind Nathan knew it was far. Very far. 

“So then we walk,” Nathan said. 

Pickles shook his head. “It’s like six miles dude. No way.” 

Skwisgaar returned then and handed a water glass to Pickles, who handed it to Nathan, who took a careful sip before balancing it on his knee, afraid to hold it aloft in his unreliable grip. 

“Better?” Pickles asked, and Nathan shrugged his good shoulder. Better would have been a beer, or a shot, or having the knife out of his fucking back, or five more minutes alone with Magnus to finish what they’d started. But it was all relative, so yeah, being conscious was better than the alternative. At least the taste of the room temperature water distracted the senses, and Nathan tried to focus on the film on his tongue over the thumping heartbeat in his throat.

“So, then I guess we’re back to the bike.” Nathan said, and Pickles winced. 

“Okay, Nate, I really need you to listen to me dude. You’re not taking the bike, okay? Because A, you wouldn’t be able to ride it yourself, and B, if we rode on it together we’d probably just crash again.”

“I still don’t know why you think he needs to go to the ER,” Murderface piped up unhelpfully from beside the drum kit. “Seriously, there’s no reason why we can’t do it here. I’ve stabbed myself plenty of times, and I’ve never had to go to no fuckin’ doctor to take it out.” 

Skwisgaar rolled his eyes, muttered “Here we goes again…” and walked backwards to lean against the far wall. Nathan could hear Pickles grinding his teeth, but Murderface’s suggestion had given him pause, and Nathan realized suddenly that he didn’t even _want_ to go to the ER. He fucking hated doctors of any kind, and hospitals, and _emergency rooms._ And hadn’t he heard a statistic somewhere that you were more likely to die from something you picked up in a hospital than from whatever brought you there in the first place?

Murderface was continuing his monologue from the drum kit. “Seriously, I can do this. You guys just need to trust me. I’ve seen so many documentaries on Civil War medicine I could remove a knife in my sleep. We’ve got everything we need right here!”

Nathan bit his lip and turned his head toward Murderface. Maybe it was the blood loss talking, but everything he was saying made a weird sort of sense. The guy did stab himself an awful lot, and it seemed like every time they caught him watching TV he always had it tuned to the History Channel, watching some shit or other about the Civil War. And of the four of them, Murderface was technically the most educated. Not only had he graduated high school, he’d even gone on to community college, and for all Nathan knew, knife-removal was something they taught there. After all, hadn’t they taught animal dissection in his high school biology class? 

”Have you removed a knife from someone’s back before?” Nathan found himself asking, and Murderface lit up with a sort of perverse excitement.

“Tch! _Have I ever removed a knife from someone’s back before?_ What a stupid question,” Murderface drawled, as though the answer were obvious. Nathan thought that sounded like a yes. “Skwisgaar, go check the freezer, see if there’s any ice.” 

As Skwisgaar disappeared for a third time into the kitchen Pickles stood up sharply from the squat he’d been in and threw up his hands. “Oh, for the love of God, shut up, Murderface!” Pickles seethed. “Shut up shut up _shut up!_ You are not removing the knife,” he jabbed a finger in the bassist’s direction, and then angled it toward Nathan, “and you are not taking the fucking bike.”

Murderface crossed his arms over his chest and widened his stance. “Who said you get to decide?”

“Me! I’m saying it right now, _I get to decide!_ Cause you guys are all fucking idiots!” Pickles shouted back.

“Well then what are we going to do, huh? Just leave him like this?” Murderface asked, and he threw an arm out dramatically toward Nathan, who suddenly felt like he was not a part of the decision making process at all. 

Pickles tapped his foot for a few seconds before saying, “We’ll call a taxi.” 

Murderface scoffed. “Yeah, that’ll work. Hey, man, yeah, our buddy here just got stabbed, can you come pick him up in your car and take him to the hospital? We don't have any money to pay you, so you'll have to write it off as a charity gig. Oh by the way he’s _bleeding everywhere.”_

“We’ll lay some towels down!”

“How? You guys only have ONE FUCKING TOWEL!”

“Alright, that’s it Murderface!” Pickles swiveled to face the bassist head on, eyes slitted. “I swear to fucking God if you open your mouth _one more time_ I’m going to shove my foot so far down your throat --”

Skwisgaar coughed loudly in the kitchen doorway.

“ -- it’ll come out your ass, do you hear me? -- “

He coughed again. Finished with his threat, Pickles rounded on the guitarist with a squawk of frustration. 

“ _What?_ Skwisgaar, _what the fuck do you want?”_

“I uh… hope... I nots interruptings anything.” Skwisgaar said coolly, standing at ease against the door frame separating the living room from the kitchen. Nathan felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach as he caught the half proud, half defiant expression on his sallow face, and mentally prepared himself for the worst. “But I uh... just gets off the phones with dat lawyer guy. He says he ams on his way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments greatly appreciated.


End file.
